


year in our lives (unpublished drabbles from 2017)

by dragonlisette



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Anxiety, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, M/M, The Amazing Tour Is Not on Fire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-18 20:09:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15493722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonlisette/pseuds/dragonlisette
Summary: i found a document of unpublished and unfinished drabbles i wrote from march to november 2017. they tended to be domestic, based on tweets or liveshows, and too short to post alone. there were close to 35,000 words. here are my favorite 10,000.





	1. tour 2016

Phil’s tired and drained and maybe getting sick again, and Dan knows it like he knows his own coffee order and the words to The Internet Is Here. His smile is just a little too glossy, his shoulders just a little too tight, and Phil’s good at hiding emotions, he’s very good, but Dan can see straight through. Some odd skill he’s picked up over the years. He also knows that there’s no time at all, that today’s stuffed to bursting with meeting and commuting and greeting and performing, and that Phil would probably rather no one notice the fake sheen to his smile. He still brushes his fingers against Phil’s elbow when he passes on the way to the door, catches his eyes and the faint look of surprise.

They’re in the car, a full foot between them, Dan bent over his phone and Phil staring straight forward out the window, that Phil returns the gesture, reaches across the seat to tap-tap at his knee, nods out at middle America. “It’s you,” he says, and he’s tipping his head at a ripped-fishnets goth waiting to cross at the streetlight.

“Don’t make fun of other people’s lifestyles, oh my God,” Dan says, and Phil smiles a little, leaves his hand in the neutral space between them like in another life Dan could reach out and take it.

The meet and greet seems longer than usual, the crowd lovely in its individual pieces and noisy and chaotic in its whole. Dan is envious as ever of Phil’s ability to blossom on command, to put aside all his personal issues and the unsmooth pieces of his personality and be the person they want him to be. They get back to the dressing room and he _wilts_ , sits down on the ugly armchair in the corner and drags his hands over his face.

“Phil,” Dan says, because he doesn’t really know what else he’s supposed to say.

“Headache,” he says, eyes still closed, and reaches a hand out vaguely, looking for Dan’s.

“Want some _ibuprofen_?” Dan says, put-on American accent. This time he can, so he catches Phil’s hand, strokes a thumb down it.

“Mm,” Phil says, and pauses for a long time. His voice is quiet when he speaks again. “Want ten seconds of existence without someone expecting something from me.”

A crew member takes that moment to duck in, deliver a series of chirpy messages. They drop hands as soon as there’s a voice at the door, but fuck it, the whole crew probably knows anyway. Dan tries to cement everything in his head, because he usually leaves logistics to Phil and Phil’s probably not listening. He tries to smile and nod warmly, because he usually leaves pleasantries to Phil and Phil doesn’t look up to it.

“Just a couple more hours,” Dan says, once the person’s gone, leaving the door ajar after them. He crosses to close it, hesitates a moment and hits the lights. “Just gotta perform a stage show, and then you can sleep.”

“In a moving tour bus.” He blinks his eyes open, smiles softly at Dan through the dimness. “Thanks. For the lights. I’m okay. It’s not a bad one.”

“It’s been a rough couple of days,” Dan says, because Phil won’t admit quite as easily that people wear and chew him to the bone, and Phil exhales an almost-indecipherable _yeah_.

 *

The show is clockwork, and if Phil presses his face into the collar of old-Dan’s coat and whispers “hi” while they’re waiting for the time travel video to wrap up, like he needs something real to cling to in the midst of the pomp and circumstance that is tour, well, no one needs to know that except Dan and the five or so other people standing around with their eyes fixed on the source of their livelihoods, and how can everyone help but expect things from them? Director Ed wants a discussion afterwards, but Phil looks far too run down for a rundown and Dan begs off, schedules it for the morning and hopes he hasn’t scheduled it on top of something else. Phil’s the one with the head for business and their whole calendar programmed into his phone.

“Thanks,” Phil says, when they’re crossing the car park in a mist of humidity and exhaust. Dan always feels like he can conquer anything, after the shows. Like he can stretch his arms wide and start running and take flight, leap light off the roof of the bus and glide above the city glitter. He pulls in a huge breath of dirty night air and then catches Phil’s arm, wrenches him and his shitty night vision away from running into the back of a car. “For escaping Director Ed.”

Dan hums, thinks that maybe protecting Phil from half a step behind is just as good as human flight. “How’s the head?”

He shrugs, which means bad. The bus is close, door left open. “Stage lights are bright.”

“I’ll steal painkillers off one of the girls,” Dan says, climbing into the familiar other world of the bus, the flat light and the blast of aircon. They’re not the first, and it takes a few minutes of _great show guys_ , _cheers you two_ to get back to the bedroom and close the door. Phil sighs out a breath, standing tense and hunched in the tiny space between the door and the bed.

“Mostly want a hug and some sleep,” he says, so Dan hugs him, enveloping and too-tight the way he reserves for only Phil.

“Bed now,” he says, walking him backwards. “I’ll do the mingling for a bit. Do the talky sidequests and see if I get a paracetamol drop.”

Phil laughs a little, pushes him away and starts stepping out of his shoes. “Loser. I’m okay. I just need, just. One minute. Tell everybody thanks from me.”

“Will do,” Dan says, hand on the doorknob, momentarily transfixed by the tired lines around Phil’s eyes, the smudge of makeup on the collar of his shirt. Phil looks back, meets his eyes, shakes his head a little, and Dan goes.

He does end up getting pain tablets, because the nicest crew member sits next to him and asks after Phil, and she’s the type that has an entire bathroom cabinet and odds-and-ends drawer in her purse. Phil’s lying in the dark when he makes it back, eyes closed but not asleep.

“Bad?” Dan asks, soft, crawling onto the bed beside him and sitting cross-legged by his head. Phil’s hand wanders out, finds Dan’s knee and clings to it.

“No. Could be worse. Do you remember the schedule for tomorrow, I didn’t write it down.”

“Stop being stubborn,” Dan says, and tucks the pills and the half-empty bottle of stale water from the bedside table into Phil’s hands. Phil’s eyes slide open, blink twice at him through the dark.

“I’m not being stubborn.”

“You’re always fucking stubborn about your head. I’ll put the times in your phone if you take those.” He lets Phil process that, crawling over him to get his phone off the floor and unlock it, opening the calendar and putting in what he remembers. He seems to have gotten the time for Director Ed right, or at least he hasn’t put it at the same time as something else. Behind him, he hears Phil sit up, unscrew the bottle cap, swallow. He looks back, sees Phil leaning to put the bottle back on the table.

“Thank you,” he says, quiet.

“That’s okay. Go to sleep.”

Phil makes a face, waves a hand abstractly around his ear. “I’m – it’s – too much.” The bus hits a bump in the road, jerking them sideways, and he winces, spits a curse quiet between his teeth, lies back and presses his head into the pillow. Dan reaches to touch his hand, wind their fingers together, rub his thumb slow over Phil’s knuckles. “And we’ve got to do it all again tomorrow.”

“Your head won’t hurt then,” Dan says. “Probably.” But he knows that the _too much_ is only partly the migraine, that a good portion of it is having to be constantly _on_ , constantly moving and thinking and playing their parts and being the people that their audience wants to come and see. There’s never enough time to settle and breathe and recharge. He lies down next to Phil, on top of the blanket, lining up their too-long limbs so that they bump and intersect in as many places as possible, keeping Phil’s hand in his and holding it to his chest. It’s not really cuddling. They indulge in that probably a little more than is practical, but it’s a lot of work and pins and needles and this too is nice. Phil turns a little, shifts to press into him.

“Thank you,” he says again. “For being here. And staying even though I’m hopelessly boring and won’t want to talk.”

“ ‘s all right,” Dan says. He doesn’t say _anytime_ or _you’d do it for me_ or anything else like that, although the sentiments bubble nameless in his chest. “Go to sleep.”

* * *

 Dan sat on the nearer of the two uncomfortable motel beds and tried to parse his own emotions, tried to decide if it was reasonable to ask his boyfriend of seven years if he could have the bed to himself. They did at home sometimes, slept in separate rooms every once in a while, but this was tour and this was different. He’d never had to ask at home, and he’d have to ask now, and he felt overwhelmed and buzzing out of his skin and he wanted his own space to think. He’d spent every spare second with Phil for the past week.

“Dibs on the shower,” Phil said, stepping out of his shoes by the deadbolted door.

“Dibs on this bed,” Dan said, before he could talk himself out of it. There was a second too long of silence, and he couldn’t bear to look up and meet Phil’s eyes.

“All of it?”

“I mean. I mean – yeah, I guess.” He looked up to make the I’m-feeling-overwhelmed face and hoped the message carried. He was already crawling with embarrassment and dread – maybe it would have been better to just lock himself in the bathroom for a while to get the too-much feeling out of his head.

Phil scanned his face and sat down on the other bed. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Dan said, too fast, and _fuck_ , why was he so bad at lying? “Yeah, I just – we always waste the second bed in hotel rooms and I want three pillows to myself. I’m calling the one in the closet. Is there gonna be one in the closet? Go see if there’s one in the closet.”

Phil looked remarkably as if he was sulking. “I’m not running errands for someone who won’t even share a bed with me.”

“Phil.”

“It’s fine. I don’t mind.” His voice was soft. “Wish you’d talk to me, though. I’m gonna go have that shower.”

And he left for the closet of a bathroom, leaving Dan to sit alone in the empty room and be grateful for sitting alone in the empty room. It was odd, feeling this way. Valuing Phil the same as always but wanting to be somewhere far away from anyone.

He went out and stood on the hot pavement of the car park, night falling deep around the cars and the heat and moisture of the day still clinging firm. He sat on the curb and let the time slip past like sand through his fingers, and then Phil was there, pajama’d legs beside him in the dark and then he was thumping down to sit on the concrete, farther away than usual, because Phil knew him like that.

“Okay?” he said again, quiet, staring out into space and fiddling with his wet fringe. There was a dab of moisturizer left caught on the edge of his jaw, and Dan reached out unconsciously to rub it in. Phil’s eyes flickered to him momentarily before returning to the horizon.

“Okay,” he said, and that was all he really wanted to say. Phil deserved more, though, so he leaned back, tumbled back onto the pavement to lie with his arms out above his head, staring at the concrete balcony above them. “Just too many people and you’re a people. You’re less of one than everybody else, but you’re still – ” He broke off, twisted to lean up on his elbow and watch Phil’s back, leaner than it should have been, carved sharp by their new normal.

“A people.” He turned around for that, a smile hovering at the edges of his mouth, invisible to anybody who hadn’t memorized every expression he was capable of. “I know _that_ , Dan. I know you. I’m feeling it too.”

“Oh.” Of course Phil had known. He felt a hot tingle of embarrassment seep into his cheeks, so he threw his arms over his face, closed his eyes and immediately felt them seal shut with exhaustion.

“Just – I don’t mind if you say things like hey Phil, let’s not share tonight because I need space. That’s a thing you’re allowed to say.”

“I know,” he mumbled into his arms. “It just feels like I’m rejecting you and I’m not, not really, am I?”

A hand closed gentle over his hipbone, and when had his hipbone not been hidden under flesh? “Feels more like rejection when you don’t explain. And let’s please go in, I’m drowning and I just had a shower.”

Phil tucked himself into the comforters of the bed Dan hadn’t called, settled down to watch Dan pace and fiddle with things. Eventually he made a sighing noise.

“What?” Dan said, frustrated with himself for the pacing.

“Bed. I’m turning the light off in exactly one minute and you’ll have to find everything in the dark.”

It’s a heavy enough threat.

* * *

Dan doesn’t remember what state they’re in.

Well, okay, the state they’re in, they’re tired, but the _state_ they’re in, it could be anywhere from Pennsylvania to Kansas and he wouldn’t really know the difference. It’s sort of green outside, flat, a parking lot, some traffic lights, the highway buzzing along to itself, and it’s been a late night and an early morning and no real breakfast and no coffee for Phil and everyone on that bus had shut up and stayed shut up because any of them would have been good for some first-degree murder, and now they’re in a Bob Evans restaurant in the middle of fucking nowhere getting what’s technically brunch because it’s half past noon but Bob Evans is marketing them pancakes.

Dan doesn’t really care what state they’re in.

Across the table, Phil’s got his head propped up on one hand, staring down at his phone with a kind of glazed expression. Any attempt to speak to him would be dangerous, really, and Dan’s too tired to engage anyway. His phone’s flat. He’s in the middle of fucking – he squints at the highway through the glass, can’t make out any signage – middle of fucking middle America, and his phone’s flat, and Phil’s off limits.

He closes his eyes for a minute against the bright fuzziness of a world on three hours of sleep, and then opens them to notice the mural on the opposite wall, which informs him that at Bob Evans, strangers are treated like friends, and friends are treated like family. He blinks at Mr. Evans himself and prays for Heathrow and gray skies and strangers who treat you like fucking strangers because that’s what you are.

Courtney is college-aged, hoop-earringed, smiley, and she uptalks them like she’s paid to do it. Dan smiles at her because Phil and the other four at the table are monosyllabic – the Morning People, damn their immortal souls, have taken other tables – and because she’s their demographic but hasn’t attempted to hug him like every other twelve-through-twenty-five-year-old he’s likely to see today, which he’s grateful for. And because she says coffee’ll be there in “just a minute,” and that’s the best thing anyone’s said to him in the past decade.

Phil sets his phone down, looking a little less dead behind the eyes, and Dan smiles at him, nudges his foot under the table. He won’t risk speaking yet, but smiles he’ll risk. Phil sideeyes him, goes back to his phone. Beside him, Anna thumps her head down on the placemat and seems legitimately ready to fall asleep. Dan looks back out the window, the sleepy town, the rushing highway, the elderly couple creaking out of their Oldsmobile and hobbling along the pavement for lunch, their arthritic hands gripped tightly between them. He glances at Phil, who’s glaring at Twitter, and back at the couple, pennyloafer shoes and ten-kilo handbag and smiles to match Courtney’s, and back at Phil, who he sees every night as an old, nostalgic future-version but has never yet stopped to actually consider as an old man. He turns his head to the window again, but the couple has reached the door and gone in. Maybe by the time they’re eighty, he’ll be able to hold Phil’s hand on a walk to lunch.

That’s a dream.

Courtney brings the coffee, hot and black and cutting through the blur of bone-deep exhaustion, and the table slowly revives. Anna starts talking about flavored creamers and starts a vicious debate about their merits, and in the midst of it, Phil smiles slowly at Dan, kicks him under the table. Dan knows his patterns, knows when he starts being functional, knows there’s a few minutes left before he’ll say anything, and he lets the silence sit comfortably between them, hooks his ankle round Phil’s and tries to decide whether the coffee’s actually good or if it’s just his brain’s survival mechanism to enjoy it.

Back on the bus, Phil curls his fingers into the pocket of Dan’s jeans and falls asleep on his shoulder. Dan lets him, slides an arm about the small of his back and leans his head against the window. It’s only ninety minutes before they get anywhere, but ninety minutes is a lot of sleep if you need it, and Phil can’t usually get to sleep on moving things. His breathing sounds a bit whistly, which maybe means cold, and Dan tucks him even closer, watches the horizon come and come and stay the same.

* * *

The dog is standing apart from the crowd at the back of the theater, snuffling absently at one of the spare patches of grass in this somewhere-in-the-West car park. It’s a big mastiffy thing with huge mournful eyes, being led by a ruffled father in a sweatshirt who’s watching the dog and doesn’t seem to have any idea that he’s positioned himself in the path of the main event.

“Hello,” Dan says, because it really is a very good dog, and they don’t get as many working dogs in the meet and greets as he would like. “Could we pat this dog?”

The man’s eyes snap up, and for a second he’s frozen, and then he laughs. “Sure you can. My daughter’s going to kill me; she’s over by the main doors.”

Marianne is glaring in the way she gets when they’re three minutes late, and Dan kneels down and strokes behind the dog’s ears. Behind him, he hears Phil snapping into sweet professionalism, asking the daughter’s name, asking if the dad wouldn’t like a picture. The man seems eager to talk, giving the name of some town he's from and then pausing like he expects them to know where it is. Dan can practically feel Phil nodding along. He strokes along the dog’s head once more, gets a mournful glance up, such big molten eyes, and stands.

“Have a good show,” the man says, pulling back on the dog’s lead to keep it from pressing after Dan for more pets. “Emily’ll be in the balcony with her mom, I’ll be in the car with the dog. I thought we were getting the short straw with it all, but I guess it’s evened out now.”

On the way in the building, in a rush of cement hallways and fast-paced instructions, Phil slips his phone into Dan’s hand. In between putting on a show of listening intently – Marianne’s listening to it all, he doesn’t need to know the exact particulars of every venue – he glances down to see it’s open to the photos, a couple blurry shots of Dan kneeling on patchy summer grass, rubbing behind a dog’s ears. One of him standing up, smiling, looking past the camera, and Dan hadn’t even seen Phil holding his phone at all. He looks tired, honestly. Thrilled to be in wherever the hell they are with this dog.

“After the tour?” he asks, when they’re finally sequestered in their dressing room, fifteen minutes until they have to be moving again. Phil’s going through his bookbag, dumping out all the contents on the rickety table to find whatever it is he’s left on the bus that Dan’s going to have to lend him. Probably his phone charger. He glances up, a little smile on his face, but that calculating behind his eyes. Businessman Phil.

“After the tour, after the photobook. A couple more projects. Another tour in a couple of years? See how long we can ride this. And then.”

“And then,” Dan says, tucking his phone charger into Phil’s hand, getting a grateful little crinkly smile.

“And then.”


	2. family

Phil is warm, solid, and fast asleep on Dan’s arm, and Dan doesn’t want to wake him so he lies in the silence and considers the pinpricks stabbing quick through his hand. Outside the window, the Florida sky is a pale gray blue. They’d considered pulling the shades, late last night, wondering because they had to whether someone could see in from the street, and then they’d said screw it and pulled them halfway. Dan’s glad about it, watching the sky crystalline clear, almost grateful for Phil’s weight on his arm for keeping him from reaching for his phone. There are sounds downstairs, Kathryn banging around in the kitchen, and in a moment he’ll poke Phil in the shoulder, over and over until he comes to his bleary senses, because one of them has to be the polite houseguest and wake up early enough to come downstairs and talk and be polite, and it isn’t going to be Phil, not at this rate.

He waits until there’s a reasonable chance at the kettle having boiled, and starts poking, jab jab jab at his shoulder, and then when he turns his head jab jab jab at his cheek, and then Phil’s eyes are sliding open, blue like a crystal treasure at the bottom of the sea and so conscious, his soul peering out before he’s awake enough to slide the screen over. Dan’s breath catches in his chest, because he loves Phil with every piece of himself but things like this, lying next to another human being with a world inside them, claiming to know enough to get to keep him – it still scares him. Scares him whenever he remembers that Phil isn’t a piece of Dan’s world but his own spinning sentient cosmos.

And then Phil closes his eyes again and makes a low moaning sound in the back of his throat and hoists himself closer into Dan’s chest so the lower part of Dan’s arm finally has some relief. He wiggles his fingers, curls the arm around Phil’s back.

“ ‘s morning.”

“Isn’t.” He brushes his lips faintly over Dan’s bare shoulder, as if that’ll convince him to go back to sleep. “It’s sleep time.”

“Your mum’s up. There’ll be coffee.”

“She’s always up,” Phil says, and tries to squirm down under the duvet, which they’ve shuffled down to their hips over the night. His hair’s a mess and he’s wearing those stupid ridiculous emoji pajama pants and his back is all over freckles and Dan aches with it all. It’s too early, Phil’s right. He’s a soppy mess.

“Can’t do Florida things if you’re sleeping. All the struggle I went through to be here, and you’re going to sleep the whole time.”

“Florida sleeping,” Phil says. His voice is drifting farther off. “I hate you.”

“What would you do if I believed that?”

He wriggles to pillow his head on his arm and pokes absently at Dan’s stomach instead of answering.

“Phil. I’m getting up. I’m gonna go have awkward small talk with your mum and tell her you’re too lazy to live.”

“She knows that already,” Phil says, and he clings a little and watches sadly from the middle of the bed when Dan extricates himself and goes searching for a shirt. Still, when Dan pauses by the door with his hand on the knob, he rolls out of the duvet and grumbles and nearly knocks his glasses on the floor and follows him down the hall trying to figure out which way round a t-shirt is supposed to go. In the kitchen, he leans heavily into Dan’s side and closes his eyes, a warm, affectionate weight, and Dan can’t help but see the performance in it, the neon sign that says  _ this is my Dan and I love him more than anything _ , and be weirdly grateful for it. They don’t get to do this often. It’s a quiet affirmation, and it pours warm pleasure around the edges of Dan’s ribs.

“That one looks a bit useless this morning,” Kathryn says from the table. She’s in glasses, holding a book in one hand and a coffee mug in the other, exactly what Phil will be a few decades from now.

“Every morning,” Dan says, because he’s feeling a bit brave with whatever this possessive thing Phil’s doing is. Kathryn laughs; Phil makes a complainy noise into his shoulder.

“S’posed to be nice to me,” he says, so Dan props him up against the counter and pours his coffee, milk and two sugars as easy as breathing. Phil makes grabby hands for it; Dan withholds it a few times, laughs, tucks it between his hands. He doesn’t mean anything by it; doesn’t mean to be especially affectionate, is just doing what he usually does when Phil is the cute side of grumpy, but when he settles back against the side by Phil, he feels Kathryn’s eyes and realizes with a swimming sensation of nerves that they haven’t been this casual around anyone besides maybe Bryony in a long, long time. She hasn’t seen this since what, Christmas ‘09? And she’s smiling, just a little, the carefully blank expression Phil does so well, and Dan thinks, okay, maybe this is going to be okay.

* * *

It’s inevitable, really. He didn’t see anyone at Christmas and he made an unsubtle but effective dodge around his birthday and he’d thought he’d be able to make another safe getaway, but karma doesn’t work like that and he sees a too familiar-face in the train station Starbucks.

Maybe if he’d actually worn sunglasses and a hat, it would have been okay, but it’s raining and he’s well over six foot and it’s really not surprising that the man – more filled-out than he had been in school, a badly trimmed beard, friendly eyes – stands up where he’s sitting by the window, makes his way through the ebbing crowd to stand at Dan’s elbow as he waits for his coffee. Fuck. He should have taken his mum’s offer on taking a thermos with, but he’d been too worried about meeting up again to give the cup back.

“Howell,” the man says, cheerful, and his name’s Harry, which Dan is grateful beyond all measure of anything to remember. They’re friends on Facebook. Proper Facebook, the one with family photos and weddings and too much leave-remain drama that Phil has to restrain him from commenting on. “Can’t believe I caught you. You’re not about too much.”

“No,” Dan says, and his organs are shriveling inside him with embarrassment and fear, fuck, what’s he supposed to  _ say _ . “Came to see family for the weekend, you know.” The barista calls his name, slides his coffee across the counter, which gives him a moment to collect himself. “How’ve you been?”

“Fine, fine.” His eyes are still friendly, which makes Dan uncomfortable. He was nice in school, a jokey, witty type, but now he seems distressingly adult. “If you remember Lisa – no? – we’re getting married in the fall.” He pauses too long, but Dan can’t think of anything to say. “You know, I saw you on the YouTube homepage a couple weeks ago.”

“Did you.” He drinks the coffee, burns his tongue, wants more than anything to escape, to get on that stupid train and text Phil and probably cry a little but not too obviously because someone with a camera might be sitting across the way. He hates coming here. “That’s – please tell me you didn’t click on it.”

“I was going to, but something in my perfectly ordinary life got in the way and I didn’t.” He claps Dan on the shoulder. “Would never have guessed you for the superstar, mate. Nice talking, though. I’ve got to catch my train in five minutes, or – ”

“Yeah,” Dan says weakly. “Nice talking to you.”

Dan’s train is delayed ten minutes past the fifteen minutes early he got there, so he sends Phil a series of increasingly distressed texts and hides in the toilet. He doesn’t cry, just leans on the cubicle wall and shivers a little. 

Phil’s response is quick.  _ At least he was nice though!! _

_ yeah but i didn’t want to see anyone i was so awkward and awful and he called me a superstar what the fuck does that mean. said he wouldn’t have thought id be the superstar. what the fuck. im all shaky and shit kill me _

Phil sends nine lizard emojis, as if he thinks that’s going to help anything at all. It kind of does. Dan hates him.

_ i already had three separate stories about howell fam horror you better have tea made and be prepared to listen to some trauma _

_ I’ll start the kettle although do we own tea? what time will u get in do u think _

_ train got delayed who fucking knows. see you never as i die of embarrassment _

_ :( _

*

It’s late when he gets back, climbing out of the Uber onto the dark street that doesn’t quite feel like home yet. The trip to the front door takes an eternity.

“Send the strippers out the back,” he calls into the silent house, kicking the door shut behind him. He drops his bag in the entryway, steps out of his shoes. So many of the lights are on, he has time to notice, and then he hears footsteps and feels Phil’s arms around his middle, squeezing tight.

“All the strippers are gone already,” he says into Dan’s neck. “We don’t have tea but I can do cocoa.”

“Fuck beverages,” Dan says, letting his arms settle on Phil’s shoulders, breathing him in. “Don’t fuck beverages. You’re nice, y’know? Nice to hug. God, I’m gonna need a minute.”

Phil hums a little, soft and affirmative. He’s easy, so easy. Dan doesn’t know how to talk to anyone that isn’t him, doesn’t know how to stop talking to him. He lets go, steps back to grind the heels of his hands into his eyes. He’s  _ tired _ , bone-deep, an anxious hum running through everything.

“Um,” he says after a second, picking up the bag and the shoes. “I’ll. Let me put this down.”

He ends up dropping them on the floor of the bedroom and collapsing face-down onto the bed, breathing in the familiar smells and trying to find his balance. Phil’s been sleeping squarely on his own side of the bed, leaving Dan’s mostly unmussed. Somehow it makes Dan smile, because this, this is where home is. It’s devastatingly domestic.

Phil will wait a while, curl up into the sofa and play a game on his phone. He gives Dan space when he needs it. Easy. So easy to be around. Dan gets out of his jacket, his jeans, washes his face, stands in the bathroom and breathes a while, hands on either side of the sink. His face is tinged gray; there are ugly bags under his eyes; his hair is an uneven, puffy mess.

He finds Phil, curled up into the sofa playing a bright, jangly game on his phone, and sinks down next to him. The television is tuned to some mindless rerun of a police drama, and Dan rests his head on Phil’s shoulder and looks at it without comprehension.

“Bet she’s the killer,” Phil says after a while, nodding at a perfectly unsuspect girl, maybe ten years old with stubby blonde braids. His fingers have slipped into Dan’s hair, cradling his head.

“Except it’s a shitty late-night cop drama and not an actual thriller,” Dan says. Without realizing, he’s started picking at the threads of Phil’s pajama bottoms, pulling and teasing them free. He splays his hands out flat, fills his lungs and empties them. “It was actually nice.”

“Going home?”

“Going to my parents’, yeah.” He puts a little more emphasis than necessary.  _ This  _ is home, the place he’s made here. “Probably not worth the stress, but. Worth doing. I’ll deal with the stress. Just – hate – ugh. You know. You know all this.”

“Don’t mind hearing it again.” Both their voices are quiet. On screen, the action hero is chasing a figure down a narrow street, all pop and flare. It makes it less weighty. Dan doesn’t mind admitting to himself that Phil knows that, that he turned it on intentionally.

“Thought I got cocoa?” 

Phil laughs a little, rubs his face through Dan’s hair. “Up, then.”

Dan sits on the floor of the kitchen, back against the cabinets with his legs stretched out long so that Phil has to dodge and step around him. It’s a dance. Phil gets the thickest mugs, the most comforting to hold, pours the milk, puts them in their new fancy microwave. The hum is comforting. Phil leaning back against the counter is comforting.

“Howell fam horror story one,” Dan says after a few seconds, and talks until he runs out of words. Phil measures the cocoa mix, stirs, tucks one mug into Dan’s hands and sits beside him on the tile, listens to all three stories Dan had planned on telling and more beyond that, never meeting Dan’s eyes but always listening, nodding, making little noises. When the mugs are empty, he stands again to rinse them out. He sets the mugs on the side, and Dan wanders to a halt.

“I’m still listening,” Phil says, and Dan’s chest squeezes painfully because he  _ is _ , because he listens to whatever Dan says and picks through the filler words and emotional tangents to get to the real point.

“I know,” he says. “I know. Thank you.”

He’s stiff, getting back to his feet after so long on the cold floor, but he feels better. He never knows quite how to understand his feelings until he’s chewed on them a while, talked around them in circles.

“Bed?” Phil says. The microwave says it’s nearing one. Dan wants nothing more than to curl up, make Phil cuddle him a bit, sleep dreamlessly. He probably won’t get the third one. His head’s still too full.

“Fuck. Please.”

“Go on, then.”

He hesitates in the bathroom, brushing his teeth and staring at himself in the mirror again. Phil’s waiting in the other room, waiting on his side of the bed, probably already drifting off. Dan’s run out of words, but he doesn’t want to stop talking to him. There’s plenty of time. In the morning. Forever. He just doesn’t want to lie awake or sleep and dream and have the same unsettling thoughts that melt into unsettling dreams that he’s had the whole time he was away.

He still looks tired, in the mirror, but he looks better than he did.

Phil is flat on his back, face turned into the pillow a little, and he smiles a little when Dan comes in, and Dan’s heart melts into his toes. He curls straight into his chest, pressing back until Phil loops an obliging arm around his middle, and tugs the duvet up to his face.

“Night,” he tells the warmth at his back, the comforting weight pressing against the lonely place between his shoulderblades. It takes a while for him to sleep, listening to Phil’s breathing steady out against the back of his neck, but when he does, he doesn’t dream at all.

* * *

Phil was stacking another armful of junk on the floor of the master bathroom when Dan heard him exhale shakily, actually shakily, and it stopped being funny.

“Hey,” he said, leaning on the doorframe, trying his best to exude warmth, “hey, it’s okay.”

Phil grimaced at him, ran a hand through his sweaty fringe, and pushed past into the bedroom. “Done laughing at me, have you?”

“I’ve been helping,” Dan said, indignant, and came up behind to work a hand over the back of Phil’s shoulder. “You know there’s no reason to be in a panic.”

“Mm, yeah, ‘cause anxiety follows all logical rules,” Phil said, wriggling his shoulders so Dan’s hand slipped off. “There’s so much left to do.”

“Plenty of time to do it in, too,” Dan said gently. “Still got two hours, about.”

It was a bad choice of words. Phil didn’t say anything, both because, Dan knew, he didn’t like saying unnecessary things, and he hated how high and panicked his voice got, how irrational he got, how snippy and mean. But his face said it clearly: two hours isn’t enough time and I’m in a train going much too fast toward a cliff and a missing tie and crashing burning failure. Dan fastened his arms around Phil’s waist, held on tightly and rubbed at his back like he could make up for the misplaced words.

“No, shh, okay, it’ll be fine and I’m going to help.”

“Okay,” Phil said, strained, and tugged Dan toward the kitchen, at which point Dan realized that making Phil feel better would actually require work, rather than just standing off to the side smiling and rolling his eyes at Phil’s flibbertigibbeting. 

“Why,” Dan says, when he’s emptying the dishwasher and no longer looking at Phil and seeing his big scared eyes, “are you stressing so much? Your mum knows we don’t keep the house spotless.”

“She doesn’t know that,” Phil says, chewing skin off his lip and considering the chrome finish on the refrigerator like he’s considering actually, like, polishing it or something.

“She saw our room in Florida. You don’t need to polish that. Help me put this stuff away.”

“Dan – ” Phil says, anguished, and flops a hand at him. “I’m going to hoover.”

“Okay,” Dan says, letting him go easy because that’s something that calms him down, however weird that is. He finishes up in the kitchen, dusts in the lounge because he loves Phil, straightens everything up to perfect symmetry because now he’s in the swing of it, and locates Phil downstairs, headphones in, singing tunelessly to something that might be Gorillaz over the hum of the vacuum. He looks better. “Hey.”

No response.

“ _ Phil! _ ”

He startles badly, pulls his headphones out, shuts the vacuum off. “D’you think that plant’s too dead?”

Dan considers it. It’s – it’s not incredibly dead, but it’s at least partially dead. “Why not. Take it to our graveyard of a bathroom, and take yourself to the graveyard of a bathroom, because you look like a sweaty rat and that’s what your mum’s going to notice, not whether the doorframes are dusted.”

Phil makes a face at him, proffers the vacuum handle. “You finish, then. It’s all done, except the gaming room.”

“Fuck the gaming room, who cares about the gaming room – ” and then, noticing Phil’s face – “you’re absolutely right, Kath definitely wants to sit down and play some Dream Daddy, I’ll get right on it.”

Phil disappears with the plant in his hands, and Dan rearranges the other items on the table for maximum symmetry so it doesn’t look like anything’s missing, and then he vacuums the gaming room, and then he wanders through the house examining everything and ends up in the master bathroom, sitting on the counter watching Phil rinse his hair. 

“You going to tell me why you’re freaking out?” he asks, loud above the water, kicking his legs back and forth a little because he can.

Phil glowers through his damp fringe. “This couldn’t wait?”

“Nah, got you cornered.” He waits for a reply, reaches to move Phil’s contact case off – well, he doesn’t put it on the tap anymore, so it’s mostly just sitting on the counter, but he thinks he’s still allowed to be annoyed by it. 

“Want them to think we’re mature adults with our lives together, I guess,” Phil says, squeezing cleanser into his hand, closing his eyes to rub circles over his cheekbones.

“I think they know us pretty well by now,” Dan says, picking absently at the label on a prescription bottle, watching Phil. “And it seems worse this time.”

“This is our first – our first proper grown-up apartment, I guess,” Phil says, and rinses his face. “Want them to look at me like a – I don’t know, like, not a kid.”

“A manly man,” Dan says knowledgeably, and Phil chokes.

“Get the fuck out of here, you can _ not _ call me a manly man while I’m naked.”

“Language!” Dan says, but he slides off the counter, leaves dramatically, slips back in a second later.

“Dan, I’m not even joking,” Phil says, but Dan flips him off and slides a particularly large potted plant away from the shower door.

“You can’t even see how many fingers I’m holding up, how’d you expect not to trip on all the corpses you stuffed in here?”

Phil, who can probably guess how many fingers Dan’s presenting him with, retains an affronted silence.

When he comes out a while later, wrapped in too many towels, Dan’s curled on the bed, dressed and waiting, watching fondly. “Didn’t know if you’d picked anything, found you shirts.” He nods at the pile on the end of the bed, mostly shirts he’d picked out of personal selfishness, because they’re ones that Phil looks nice in. Or, well, Phil always looks nice, and now he’s smiling a little, dripping his way over – because that’s logical, three towels and he’s dripping on the floor – and Dan leans up to kiss him. “Get dressed, loser. I’ve been over the whole house twice and it’s all perfect. And your mum texted, they’ve just met up with Martyn and Cornelia.”

“Thank you,” Phil says quietly, and gets dressed in Dan’s second-favorite shirt on him, puts his contacts back in, does his hair, stands a bit helplessly in the dim light of the room like he isn’t sure what to do with himself now that everything’s done. Dan hauls himself up. There’s a dab of moisturizer left caught on the edge of his jaw, and Dan reaches out almost unconsciously to rub it in.

“It’s okay. They love you no matter what. And your mum’s already well chuffed it’s her birthday.”

“That goes for you as well,” Phil says, somewhat firmly, and Dan’s taken a little by surprise.

“What d’you mean?”

“Don’t tell me that when they get here you’re not gonna be a mess of nerves. You always are, first day around them. I freak out before, you freak out during.”

“That’s not true,” Dan says, and endures Phil’s diamond-cutter blue eyes. “I’m just – being polite.”

It’s that moment the doorbell goes, and they both make identical motions toward the door, and there’s a jolt of fear in Dan’s stomach that he wasn’t entirely expecting. Phil rolls his eyes at him like something had shown on his face.

“It’ll be fine, Dan. They love you already.”


	3. miscellaneous

He tells Phil before he tells Twitter, taking the stairs three at a time with a hand over his mouth to hide his elated horror at whatever it is he’s just done. Phil is back in his bedroom reading some Stephen King book he’s read three times already, so far away from the action that he looks up at Dan’s breathless, laughing form and just stares.

“I just stole the neighbors’ dog, holy fuck Phil, we’re gonna die.”

Phil jolts upright and actually, literally drops his book. “ _ Dan! _ Give it back, they already think we’re weird, what the hell were you thinking, give them their dog back – ”

“No, no, Phil,” Dan starts, and doubles over laughing, clinging to the doorframe. “I did, I did, they’ve got it, I didn’t steal it on purpose.”

“It’s not funny!” Phil says, because Dan’s now slumped on the floor and he thinks he’s probably crying. “What did you even do?”

“Got the post – left the door open accidentally – just sat there editing in the office – look down, there’s a motherfucking terrier on the floor looking up at me like _ ooh hello there Dan _ – ” He breaks off to laugh more, just because Phil’s looking at him like he’s possessed. 

“Okay,” Phil says after a second, a reluctant smile creeping onto his face. “Okay, that’s probably acceptable behavior. I thought you’d – ”

“I sat there and fucking petted the dog for an hour, Phil! I thought they’d gone out or something, but no, they were combing London for my little editing helper, Jesus Christ.”

Phil’s peering out from behind his fingers with a vaguely panicky glint to his eyes. “Dan.”

“He was a good boy! They’ll never know, they basically thought I was their hero when I came trotting up holding him.”

“You’re the worst person in the entire world and I’m having heart failure, oh my  _ god _ .”

“He was a good boy,” Dan repeats, like that’ll make Phil understand where he’s coming from. “I’m tweeting it.”

“No, Dan, they’ll see, they’ll know – ”

“If they knew who we were, it’d have come up by now,” Dan says dismissively, retrieving his phone. “Shh, I need to think.”

And Phil does shh, but the horrified stare coming from above is a little distracting all the same. Dan types, deletes, retypes, redeletes, comes up with a new version, goes through all the stages of copyediting, and posts. The little ding from Phil’s bedside table is the confirmation that it’s gone through, so he floats in a sea of replies for a while and then climbs up off the floor onto Phil’s bed.

“I can’t believe you,” Phil says, but he’s not angry. He reaches for his phone and reads the tweet. “I really can’t believe you.”

“It’s a sign,” Dan says, because sometimes he likes to play pretend. “It’s the universe saying, Dan and Phil need a dog two-k-seventeen.”

“I think that’s tumblr,” Phil says, and rests his head on Dan’s shoulder for a brief moment. He’s forgiven.

* * *

Phil wasn’t really listening, but that was okay. When Dan talked like this, it was only partly to get feedback. Mostly it was to get it out in the open, figure out what it was exactly that he was saying, what he meant, who he was. Phil was just the audience, curled sideways next to him, watching his face, watching him stare upward and gesticulate at the ceiling. He was coming to a close anyway, his thoughts banking slowly closer to home.

“Approximately how long,” Dan said finally, soft and slow the way he only really got when the shadows hung dark around the corners of the room, “do you think you’ve spent listening to me waffle. In total.”

“Mm,” Phil said, feigning thought. “Eight years or so?”

Dan made a face, mumbled “shut th’fuck up,” and rolled into Phil’s chest, pressing his forehead against Phil’s collarbone. Phil patted his hair, wove his fingers between the curls.

“It’s okay. I like your voice.”

“Good.” His arms were sneaking around Phil’s middle, clinging on, searching for a comforting presence. “You’re morally obligated to.”

* * *

Dan is tired. He’s shutting down, he can feel it, he can feel his silences and the yearn for quiet and his curling into himself. Phil probably knows too, is eyeing him sideways, putting a gentle hand at the small of his back to move him when he misses cues, isn’t sure where to go. He’s probably being rude, avoiding conversation with the people here he doesn’t know well, staying quiet in conversations with people he does. At least, he tells himself, he doesn’t have his phone out, is keeping his eyes in front of him. The people they were last talking to have moved off, and for a second there’s a lull.

Phil slides his own phone into Dan’s hand, open to the notes.

_ u okay for a bit more or are u done _

Dan types, feels Phil warm and close, scanning the crowd. He looks at the time, half past ten, not really late enough to leave politely no matter how worn down he feels.

_ should stay to 11 _

“Should,” Phil says in his ear, knuckles brushing Dan’s for a second before he puts his phone back in the pocket of his pants, “or let’s?”

“I’m fine,” Dan says, and someone else they barely know comes up for a chat, and Phil takes over on the cheeriness and Dan gives himself permission to seem distant a bit rude.

They leave at eleven, but there are people in the elevator with them and they get pulled into talking in the hallway and by the time the door shuts behind them it’s nearly eleven-thirty and Dan feels fragile.

“Shower,” he says, struggling out of his shoes. Phil’s already sprawled on the bed, eyes closed, because this kind of thing gets to him too. 

“Mm,” he says. “Save hot water.”

“Idiot. ‘s a hotel.”

Phil’s smiling into the pillow, so Dan leaves, closes and locks the bathroom door, rests his forehead on the wall and breathes. He’s crawling with it, with the people, his chest aches, he’s grimy from a long convention day in California heat and hugging people, fuck, he doesn’t even like hugging people if they’re not in a select tiny group of people he’s comfortable with. He gives himself long minutes, sits on the cool tile floor and buries his face in his knees, and then he goes out into the main room again to find his pajamas.

“Was fast,” Phil says, shirt halfway off and playing a bubble popper game.

“Idiot,” Dan says again. Phil makes a sad noise. His phone jangles excitedly at some new achievement. “Did you bring the nice shower gel?”

“Yeah,” he says, propping himself up on his elbow. “ ‘s in the bottom. Told you not to take all the hot water.”

“Get your shirt off properly,” Dan says, and disappears again. He takes forever in the shower, scalds himself into peace, covers himself in Phil’s new vanilla-scented expensive thing once and then twice, cries a little. He’s tired. He’s so tired. He’s bubbling with anxiety that he can’t find the root cause of in his head, an oil spill of toxic-sludge fear that burns in his stomach, makes it hard to think and breathe and move. He cries a little more, and rests his head on the wall, and gets out and puts his pajamas on, revels in the softness and the circulation.

Phil is in his socks and underwear now, his fancy-dress clothes kicked to the end of the bed, but he’s still playing the bubble popper game. Dan doesn’t bother speaking to him, crawls into the bed and presses up close to his chest, breathing in his warmth, his sweetness. Phil arranges his arms to get them around Dan’s neck, presses his nose into Dan’s damp curls, keeps playing.

“Weren’t you going to take one?” Dan asks a long time later, sleepy, half in a doze, hypnotized by the sparkly little sounds from Phil’s phone.

“Mm,” Phil says, and gets distracted by rubbing his face through Dan’s mostly-dry hair. “Yeah, I was. So tired, though. And I’ve nearly beaten this.”

Dan can’t decide whether he wants to laugh or curl even closer, break through mortal restrictions and curl up inside Phil’s ribs. “Go. But come back.”

Phil’s fast, which is a good thing, because Dan would probably have fallen asleep if he hadn’t been. He comes back in pajamas, stumbling over Dan’s shoes where he left them on the floor, glasses on his face and tube of moisturizer in his hand. He sits crosslegged on the bed, lets Dan rest his head in his lap, tucks the glasses into Dan’s hand and starts rubbing the moisturizer in.

“Love you,” Dan says, rearranging to watch Phil work. His eyes crinkle a little, and he dots lotion on Dan’s nose. He nearly misses, squinting at Dan’s face in a way that probably shouldn’t be as endearing as it is.

“You love me ‘cause I’m still soft and luminous at thirty, so really you love my skincare routine.” He sets the tube on the bedside table, does a last once-over of his face with his fingertips.

Dan shrugs, yawns. “Love your skincare routine too, I guess.” He hands Phil his glasses, watches him blink and focus back in. “Rub my nose, don’t be mean.”

Phil obligingly rubs the lotion in, strokes over Dan’s cheekbones with the excess, folds himself over for kissing. It’s sweet, slow, relaxing. Dan sighs into it, lets his hand float up to rest on Phil’s cheek, soft and smooth as always. They readjust, curl into each other, Phil pulling the duvet up around them, breaking away to set his glasses aside again and turn the lights off. When he returns, Dan burrows into his chest and holds on tight.

“Wanna talk?” Phil says, settling, rubbing Dan’s back a little.

Dan mumbles a random assortment of sounds. He doesn’t, really. It’s too much effort to form words, and he’s tired, and he’s yawning again, and the quiet dark room and the comfortable bed and Phil’s hands on his back are the nicest things he’s ever experienced.

“Okay,” Phil says, amused. “Night.”

“You talk,” Dan says. He’s never had a filter with Phil, or at least he hasn’t for a long time. It’s easy, mostly, to say what he wants and know that Phil isn’t going to be judging him for it. “Tell me things.”

Phil considers this, his hand sliding up into Dan’s hair to cradle his head. “Okay.”

“Nice things. ‘m anxious, don’t go talking about Steven King or – or today or some shit.”

“I’ll tell you animal facts.”

“I already know all your animal facts.”

“That’s what you think,” Phil says, and tells him a long list of animal facts Dan’s already heard once or twice or many times, all in the same soft monotone, his fingers moving slowly on Dan’s scalp, and Dan knows he’s being intentionally comforted and can’t bring himself to mind at all. He’s asleep halfway through something about okapis, and he doesn’t really dream.

* * *

It had started on the day they moved in, or, more correctly, the day they’d first seen the house, because Phil had peeked over the fence in the back garden and seen an enormous golden retriever sunning himself in the grass behind the house next door and had decided that this was the only house that would do. On the day they moved in, Dan had been dying of anxiety, sure that they were now the spectacle of the neighborhood despite the fact that they’d moved into places before, and then a neighbor had marched up, red-haired, rosy-cheeked, a few years older than Phil, and had taken it upon herself to offer assistance. Dan had been awkward and horrified, and had completely ignored the situation and left for Phil and his icebreakers to worry about. But that night, curled up together in their fourth moving-box filled bedroom in ten years, an unfamiliar plastered ceiling above their heads, Phil had prodded his arm.

“Dan,” he’d hissed, “Dan, I think she was the dog neighbor.”

That had been it. Their only goal now was to befriend Elizabeth the neighbor and potentially her dog, and it hadn’t been hard to do, but now Dan was sitting on her kitchen floor and trying to decide whether he regretted it all, because it turned out that Elizabeth didn’t just have a dog, she had a wife and an eighteen-month-old called Lucy, and when she’d asked them the week before if they could watch Lucy while she and her wife went off to some highly prestigious medical conference in France for the weekend and they’d said yes, well – well, now they were in for it.

“Hello,” Dan said to Lucy, who was currently opening and closing the refrigerator door repeatedly, using all of her toddler strength to do so. “Maybe have you considered that opening and closing the refrigerator wastes the energy used to keep it cold?”

Lucy, who most likely had not considered that, wandered back over to Dan in her ice-cream patterned pajamas, sucking peaceably on her dummy and observing him with mostly unimpressed eyes.

“Hi,” he said, reaching out, filled with some enormous feeling over her chubby cheeks and tiny hands. She waddled straight past his outstretched hand and began opening and closing one of the cupboard doors, and then gave that up to go and pick up a small blue stuffed bear she’d abandoned earlier and bring it to him, sticking it out toward him.

“Thank you,” he said, deeply honored, and he’d gotten so into taking the things that she handed him and then giving them back when she asked for them that he didn’t even notice when Phil came back into the room.

* * *

“What if we didn’t do the whiskers this year?” Dan asks, marker pen held loosely in his hand.

“It’s a tradition,” Phil says, almost affronted, sitting amidst a room that is entirely tradition and none at all who he actually is these days. But he’s looking at Dan with a kind of soft curiosity. “Why?”

Dan shrugs, unable to articulate what he’s thinking. Something like they’re not teenagers anymore. Something like they’re not head over heels anymore, that this has settled and solidified into something steady, something real and good and permanent. Something like cat whiskers makes this silly, makes someone looking in from the outside roll their eyes when he really just wants them to see how much he loves this man that definitely isn’t a boy anymore.

* * *

“Close your eyes and hold out your hands.”

Phil’s voice comes from behind him, a thread of excitement running through it, and Dan nearly turns around to look before he’s met with an angry squawk and a clumsy flutter of movement away.

“That’s a fucking line,” Dan says, and goes back to watching a butterfly dance in the tall grasses by the edge of the pond, far enough away that it was pretty instead of horrifying.

Phil nudges at the back of his leg with the toe of his running shoe. The park isn’t crowded, not on the Tuesday midmornings they choose to walk nowadays, and the contact no longer makes Dan automatically tense and scan the horizon. “You’re gonna do it anyway. You are. Close your eyes, go on.”

Dan does, offers a single hand, makes sure every single line in his posture implies great toleration of the ridiculous. “It better not be a beetle, Phil.”

“It’s not,” Phil says, and it’s soft instead of defensive, and then there’s a lot of hard little somethings pouring into Dan’s hand, and he has to flail with the other hand to keep them all from spilling. His eyes open of their own accord, and Phil’s beaming back at him. “Duck food, we’re feeding the ducks, I bought a whole bag from the man back there.”

Dan can’t keep himself from smiling, just a little. “We’re feeding the ducks. The park-raised lazy overfed ducks.”

“Yes,” Phil says, and bumps shoulders with him, coming to stand beside him with his elbows on the bridge railing. It’s nice to have him close. It’s been a good day but yesterday wasn’t and it doesn’t seem to matter what kind of day it is, Phil stands right next to him anyway. Yesterday he brought him coffee and the last pastry. Today it’s shoes (come on, Dan, we’re going for a walk) and duck food. 

Phil is rattling on about properly nutritionally balanced duck pellets and how bread is bad and these have all the vitamins ducks need and the man was telling him – and Dan isn’t really listening, and he takes a handful and flings it out toward three fat ducks that have been sitting on the bank mostly ignoring the humans, and they look intrigued and slide off into the murky water to poke at the floating food.

“Dan!” Phil says. “I was going to do a 3-2-1 and we see which of us the ducks like more.”

“Me,” Dan says, and takes more food out of Phil’s crinkly paper bag, tosses it toward a particularly adventurous soul paddling toward the bridge. “You’re a try-hard and I bet you’ve already named them all. They sense your weakness.”

“Only that one,” Phil says, nodding toward a grumpy-looking loner. “He’s called Dan.”

“Shut up,” Dan says, and smiles in the sunlight.

**Author's Note:**

> reblog on tumblr [here](http://cityofphanchester.tumblr.com/post/176448805205/year-in-our-lives-unpublished-drabbles-from-2017) <3


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